Transformations. I. The effect of DAF on sentence generation

A hypothesis based on the psycholinguistic derivation of sentences was tested. The task required that sentences temporarily stored in memory be transformed and spoken with delayed auditory feedback. An instruction to repeat the stimulus sentence verbatim or grammatically transform it was placed either immediately before or immediately after the sentence. Two measures of interference were obtained based on the syllable rates for the response times. The different grammatical forms showed significant variation in the amount of interference, but the amount of interference appeared to relate primarily to the length of the transformed sentence rather than to its derivational complexity. Interaction between the position of the instruction and the sentence generation task is discussed in terms of the underlying memory functions involved. A further test was proposed.     

Section II Group Therapy for Children in Latency

A variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors exert pressure on clinicians and researchers to forge a more effective alliance in their mutual efforts to understand treatment process and outcome. The authors provide a general framework and a specific group-therapy model to demonstrate how research measures can facilitate this integration and thereby improve the quality of service delivery. We divide treatment into four phases: negotiation, retention, enhancement, and evaluation, and illustrate how psychotherapists can use research instruments to overcome problems at each stage of intervention.     

Low-cost equipment for schedule generation: II. Time-dependent schedules

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic provides an efficient and convenient technology for the generation of schedules of reinforcement. A single circuit provides a module capable of use as either a fixed-interval timer or one generating a differential reinforcement of low-rate schedule. A second circuit provides for a programmable variable-interval generator with 16 independent intervals. Both modules are fully compatible with previously described circuits for ratio schedules.     

Multiple Visual Latency

It has long been known that a dark visual stimulus is seen later than a bright one, with a delay up to several 10s of milliseconds. Systematic studies of various phenomena demonstrating this delay have revealed that the perceptual latency decreases monotonically as the stimulus intensity increases. Because latencies measured by psychological methods and cortical evoked responses are very similar to electroretinogram latencies, it has become a common belief that there is little in the intensity-dependent latency function that cannot be explained by retinal processes. In this study, we report evidence that there is no one absolute visual delay common to the whole visual system, but rather that the delay varies considerably in different perceptual subsystems. The relative visual latency was found to be considerably shorter in the task involving detecting the direction of movement than in other perceptual tasks that presume visual awareness of the beginning or temporal order of visual events.     

Latency and Response Complexity

Two experiments were conducted in which the latency of movement responses of varying complexity was investigated. The complexity of an arm sweep movement was varied by (a) increasing the extent of movement from 6 in. to 18 in., (b) reversing the movement, and (c) by making two or three pauses in an on-going movement. The results only partially supported the hypothesis that the latency of a response is related to the complexity of the movement pattern. Specifically RT was longer when the response involved significant changes in the temporal organization of the movement pattern.     

Learned Reduction of Drinking Latency

Arguments have been presented claiming that personality structure in the questionnaire medium can only be found by factor analyzing item data. To test this assumption, Cattell's 16PF, which was developed through factoring of parcels, was administered to 264 undergraduate students at the University of Illinois. Item data was factor analyzed, yielding essentially the same factor structure as produced by the original parceling.     

Latency differences to monochromatic stimuli measured by disjunctive reaction time.

Two studies were done in order to assess the effects of wavelength on visual perceptual latency as measured in a disjunctive RT paradigm. The results of the first study, though not statistically significant, suggested a trend toward shorter RT to longer wavelength stimuli. In the second study, using well-practiced subjects, significant differences were found between disjunctive RT to red and green stimuli. The results suggest that latency differences as a function of wavelength are demonstrable in an experimental situation in which the subject must react to chromatic information, as differentiated from brightness information.     

Age-related deficits in generation and manipulation of mental images: II. The role of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

The authors investigated neural substrates of age-related declines in mental imagery. Healthy adult participants (ages 19 to 77) performed a series of visual-spatial mental imagery tasks that varied in apparent difficulty and involved stimuli of varying graphic complexity. The volumes of the dorsolateral frontal cortex (DLPFC) and posterior visual processing areas were estimated from magnetic resonance imaging scans. The volume of the DLPFC and the fusiform cortex, working-memory capacity, and performance on the tasks involving image generation and manipulation were significantly reduced with age. Further analyses suggested that age-related deficits in performance on mental imagery tasks may stem in part from age-related shrinkage of the prefrontal cortex and age-related declines in working memory but not from age-related slowing of sensorimotor reaction time. The volume of cortical regions associated with modality-specific visual information processing did not show a consistent relationship with specific mental imagery processes.     

Cautions regarding random number generation on the Apple II

Undocumented characteristics of the pseudorandom number generators in Applesoft BASIC and Apple Pascal are described that cause identical sequences to be generated on different executions of programs written in those languages. Although it is relatively easy for this problem to escape notice, in both cases the problem is easily corrected once its existence is known.     

Latency models for reaction time distributions

This paper presents an adaptation of the method of moments for comparing observed and theoretical distributions of reaction time. By using cumulants in place of moments, considerable simplification of the treatment of convoluted distributions is obtained, particularly if one of the components is normally distributed. Stochastic latency models are often poorly fitted by reaction time data. This may be because a simple latency distribution is convoluted with a normal or high-order gamma distribution. The comparison method described will assist investigation of this and other interpretations of reaction time distributions.This work forms part of a project on Information in skill situations supported by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The paper is in part fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Reading University.     

Group Psychotherapy with Latency Age Boys

This study examines the confidentiality practices of highly experienced, well-trained group psychotherapists. A provocative finding was that practitioners rarely inform prospective clients of confidentiality limitations. Their reluctance to do so appears to be based upon the belief that it might discourage persons from entering treatment, as well as having negative ramifications for the therapeutic process (e.g., members may be less likely to talk about unprotected topics). The prevalence and content of breaches in confidentiality are explored. Ethical, legal, clinical, and educational implications of these and other findings are addressed. Research recommendations are offered.     

Transformations of Emotional Experience

In this paper the author approaches mental pain and the problems in a psychoanalytic treatment of patients with difficulties in the psychic transformation of their emotional experiences. The author is interested in the symbolic failure related to the obstruction of development of phantasies, dreams, dream‐thoughts, etc. She differentiates symbolization disturbances related to hypertrophic projective identification from a detention of these primitive communications and emotional isolation. She puts forward the conjecture that one factor in the arrest of this development is the detention of projective identifications and that, when this primitive means of communication is re‐established in a container–contained relationship of mutual benefit, this initiates the development of a symbolization process that can replace the pathological ‘protection’. Another hypothesis she develops is that of inaccessible caesuras that, associated with the detention of projective identification, obstruct any integrative or interactive movement. This caesura and the detention of projective identifications affect mental functions needed for dealing with mental pain. The personality is left with precarious mental equipment for transforming emotional experiences. How can a psychoanalytical process stimulate the development of creative symbolization, transforming the emotional experiences and leading towards mental growth? The author approaches the clinical problem with the metaphor of the psychic birth of emotional experience. The modulation of mental pain in a container–contained relationship is a central problem for the development of the human mind. For discovering and giving a meaning to emotional experience, the infant depends on reverie, a function necessary in order to develop an evolved consciousness capable of being aware, which is different from the rudimentary consciousness that perceives but does not understand. The development of mature mental equipment is associated with the personality's attitude towards mental pain. The differentiation between psychotic, neurotic or autistic functioning depends on what defences are erected to avoid mental pain. The primary link between infant and mother is where the building of mental equipment takes place, through communicational forms that, to begin with, are not verbal. The author suggests the need for the development of an ideo‐grammar (in gestures, paralinguistic forms, etc.) in primary relations, as the precursor forms that will become the matrix for the mental tools for dealing with emotional experiences in a mature way. The paper stresses the significance of the parental containing function for the development of symbolization of prenatal emotional experiences. This containment develops ideograms, transformations of sense impressions into proto‐symbols, instruments that attenuate the traumatic experiences of helplessness. The author takes Bion's ideas about extending the notion of dream‐work to an alpha function that goes on continually, day and night, transforming raw emotional experiences in a ‘dream’. In order to acquire a meaning, facts need to be ‘dreamed’ in this extended sense. Meaning and truth are the nurture of the mind. Mental growth, the development of adequate tools – including reverie – for dealing with mental pain, seen from a psychoanalytic perspective including reverie, implies that the object becomes a provider of meanings. Analysis begins to aim primarily at the generation or expansion of the mental container, instead of predominantly working on unconscious contents as such.     

Latency of autokinesis and convergence of the eyes

It is suggested that one of the determinants of autokinesis is noise associated with a hypothesized eye-in-head position monitor within the oculomotor system. It is argued that a decrease in convergence of the eyes is associated with a decrease in the magnitude of the signal relating to eye position. The prediction is that this will thereby produce an increase in the effectiveness of noise as a spurious signal. An experiment is described in which a just-visible oscilloscope spot was viewed in a dark room at four distances along the subject's median sagittal plane. The latency of appearance of autokinetio movement was measured in each of these conditions. It was found that as distance increased, i.e. as convergence decreased, latency decreased also. This result is consistent with the prediction.     

Transformations: a blueprint for narrative changes in therapy.

When problematic-symptomatic behaviors are conceived as embedded, retained, and maintained in collective stories, therapy can be described as the transformative process by which patients, families, and therapists co-generate qualitative changes in those stories. An emphasis on narratives allows one to specify further how those transformations unfold at the more "micro" level of the exchanges that take place throughout the consultation. To that specification is devoted the core of this essay, which closes with a discussion of the clinical, training, and, especially, research potentials of this systematization.     

The Theory of Transformations and Autistic States Autistic Transformations: A Proposal1

This work integrates two areas of thinking: one in which the author develops considerationsregardingobservationmethodsofmentalphenomenainpsychoanalysis according to Bion's theory of transformations; the other in which she is concerned with the investigation of primitive mental states‐protomental states‐more specifi cally, the autistic states of neurotic patients, described by Tustin. Some ideas on the ‘philosophical’ position underlying transformations theory are elaborated, particularly emphasizing the idea that the same phenomenon in psychoanalysis may be considered from different perspectives, as long as it is situated within the theoretical reference frame to which it belongs. The author considers the idea that this method of phenomenon observation is part of a wider context of general human knowledge, in which uncertainty and relativity of concepts are the main components. By adopting transformations theory as a perspective of phenomena observation that pervades the analytical meeting, the author questions whether it is possible to include other groups of transformation of emotional experiences in this theory, which shows particular phenomena with specifi c qualities, distinct from those emphasized by Bion. She hypothesizes that autistic phenomena present in neurotic patients, characterizing autistic states, may be considered and detached, making up a particular group of transformation of emotional experience, which analysts often face in their daily practice. She names this group ‘autistic transformations’.